Hmm, an 'accidental' launch towards the Asteroid Belt, eh? The billionaire techno-maverick with his own private space program looks more and more like Malenfent in Stephen Baxter's Time. Any news on GM squids?

SuicideJunkie wrote:Also keep an eye out for ads which will soon be able to mention that their cars, on average, have a very impressive range on a single charge.

Considering the fuel used to get it into space, what's the MPG rating?

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Heartfelt thanks from addams and from me - you really made a difference.

ucim wrote:Considering the fuel used to get it into space, what's the MPG rating?

Jose

Getting better every second! I don't know how fast it is going, but for a first approximation I'll use the 11.2km/s from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity, so let's say about 25,000 MPH, the thing has been up there for a couple days now hasn't it? so maybe a million miles or so, While I didn't look very hard, I couldn't find the fuel load in gallons, but I'd bet 100,000 gallons is in the ballpark.While by todays standards 10MPG is pathetic, for a grossly overpowered muscle car it's not so bad, and by the end of the month it will make a Prius look like a fuel guzzler. At least it isn't running on electricity from a coal fueled power plant.

IIRC, the original moon landing was something on the order of six inches per gallon. The moon is about 240000 miles away, and it took nearly 1 million gallons of kerosene, oxygen, and hydrogen to get there and back.

CorruptUser wrote:IIRC, the original moon landing was something on the order of six inches per gallon. The moon is about 240000 miles away, and it took nearly 1 million gallons of kerosene, oxygen, and hydrogen to get there and back.

1 ft per gallon if you ignore the oxygen.

Something don't seem quite right about your figures. According to my calculations it was not 240,000 miles to the moon but 1.267 billion feet. While I'm not saying that that is good mileage, it seems like about 1267 ft to the gallon.

SuicideJunkie wrote:It is definitely a good thing it was a Tesla put up there. Can you imagine how hard it would be to have to change the oil every 15000km?

Also keep an eye out for ads which will soon be able to mention that their cars, on average, have a very impressive range on a single charge.

I totally agree with this, battery range is the #1 concern of EV buyers. This study on tesla and their range is pretty interesting https://www.autolist.com/tesla#section=news&s=a i guarantee that as soon as most car makers on average can boast a 500+ mile range we will see commercials everywhere (and people actually driving them!)

That's one of the reasons I really love having a Chevy Volt. On average I stay within a pretty small radius, so my electric range of 40-50 miles gets me through most of the time. But then I also have an 8 gallon gas tank and somewhere in the realm of 40mpg, so I can still take road trips and not have to worry about things like finding charging stations along the way.

Aside from the price one of the main reasons I didn't really want a Tesla was because I know I take long trips occasionally and I didn't want to deal with those logistics.

SAN FRANCISCO — A woman in Tempe, Ariz., has died after being hit by a self-driving car operated by Uber, in what appears to be the first known death of a pedestrian struck by an autonomous vehicle on a public road.

The Uber vehicle was in autonomous mode with a human safety driver at the wheel when it struck the woman, who was crossing the street outside of a crosswalk, the Tempe police said in a statement. The episode happened on Sunday around 10 p.m. The woman was not publicly identified.

gmalivuk wrote:

King Author wrote:If space (rather, distance) is an illusion, it'd be possible for one meta-me to experience both body's sensory inputs.

Yes. And if wishes were horses, wishing wells would fill up very quickly with drowned horses.

According to a quote from Uber, and of course we should wait to see the footage for it to be confirmed, she stepped out of the shadows right into the car's path. Pretty much impossible to program an autonomous vehicle to avoid killing someone in that situation.

Most people are not axe wielding maniacs named Steve. If there were equal numbers of Steve's and not Steve's, and everyone not Steve killed more than everyone Steve, we could argue that axe wielding maniacs named Steve are less dangerous than the average. But if there is only one Steve and he killed one person, he is far more dangerous than the average.

Most people are not axe wielding maniacs named Steve. If there were equal numbers of Steve's and not Steve's, and everyone not Steve killed more than everyone Steve, we could argue that axe wielding maniacs named Steve are less dangerous than the average. But if there is only one Steve and he killed one person, he is far more dangerous than the average.

Or Steve is a lumberjack and Not Steves are hippies jumping under the tree/Axe as it falls.

Most people are not axe wielding maniacs named Steve. If there were equal numbers of Steve's and not Steve's, and everyone not Steve killed more than everyone Steve, we could argue that axe wielding maniacs named Steve are less dangerous than the average. But if there is only one Steve and he killed one person, he is far more dangerous than the average.

Even if you corrected for the relative distribution of autonomous/non-autonomous cars, I'm pretty sure the autonomous ones are still safer even with this one death.

CorruptUser wrote:Except I don't jump in front of trees, but I do walk across streets, so I'm going to care more about one than the other.

And off topic, but hippies chaining themselves to trees; good or bad?

You're not suppose to jump in front of cars without looking both ways for traffic... So says big auto AI. It could be that the woman did everything right, and the car is a murder bot. But I'd bet that it's the pedestrian's fault. Maybe 80% since it's not Tesla nor bad street conditions.

I think we have the same bias in that we agree that Tesla is better than Uber. Uber comes across as being run by assholes that would make a fortune by releasing a murderbot and then justify themselves with pseudo-libertarian nonsense about free markets.

Tempe police Sgt. Ronald Elcock said local authorities haven’t drawn any conclusions about who is at fault but urged people to use crosswalks. He told reporters at a news conference Monday the Uber vehicle was traveling around 40 mph when it hit Helzberg immediately as she stepped on to the street.

The pedestrian was crossing without a crosswalk, at 10PM (so presumably in the dark), and was hit "immediately" which sounds like a situation where a human driver may not have been able to avoid it either.Of course, between the cameras and all the other data recorded by the vehicle, plus the NTSB coming in to help investigate, there should be a solid determination of fault before too long.

I liked this quote also from that article:

“We should be concerned about automated driving,” Smith said. “We should be terrified about human driving.”

UPDATE just after I posted that, I found this article which, while not an official ruling yet, does support the assumption that it wasn't vehicle error:

Police have viewed footage from two of the vehicle’s cameras, one facing forward toward the street, and the other inside the car facing the driver. Based on the footage, Moir said that the driver had little time to react. “The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” she said. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”

She added, “It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode [autonomous or human-driven] based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway.”

Yep. I mean, I'll rag on autonomous driving from sunup to sundown, but in fairness, the number of drivers who actually travel at the speed limit and not 5-over is just plain statistically insignificant.

"'Legacy code' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrupwww.commodorejohn.com - in case you were wondering, which you probably weren't.

CorruptUser wrote:Except I don't jump in front of trees, but I do walk across streets, so I'm going to care more about one than the other.

And off topic, but hippies chaining themselves to trees; good or bad?

If a human sees someone walking on a sidewalk that is not near any crosswalks and frequently looking over their shoulder, they could by stopping near the pedestrian, flashing their high-beams and slow down if the pedestrian runs across, or slow to a speed that is easier to stop at.

If a AI sees someone walking on a sidewalk that is not near any crosswalks and frequently looking over their shoulder, it would consider this data irrelevant and would continue operating as if the pedestrian was not there. Sure, someone could program the AI to respond differently in this situation, but there is no way for a person would be able to predict every situation that could possible happen.

P.S. [The relationship between humans and the environment] is a complex, multifaceted issue that requires extensive study just to begin to understand, so any binary question on this issue is inherently inaccurate. Fun fact: substitute the bracketed section to get my opinion on political parties, abortion, campaign finance, taxes, the Middle East, terrorism, gun control, racism, Islam*, methods to generate energy, college costs, sexism, and hate speech. Pretty much everything except Trump.

*By this I mean how some people use Islam to justify actions and institutions that many people find objectionable (e.g. women cannot drive).

"You are not running off with Cow-Skull Man Dracula Skeletor!" -Socrates

elasto wrote:The same day this happened almost 3,000 other people also died in car accidents.

“We should be concerned about automated driving,” Smith said. “We should be terrified about human driving.”

The accidents-per-mile ratios do NOT look good for the autonomous vehicles so far, and consider that the autonomous vehicles are mostly driving in ideal conditions, not snow, rain, crowded areas... Self-driving cars work great in the lab but they are a long ways off working in the wide variety of conditions in the real world. (Just like every other so called AI 'breakthrough' that we're told is gonna happen)

commodorejohn wrote:Yep. I mean, I'll rag on autonomous driving from sunup to sundown, but in fairness, the number of drivers who actually travel at the speed limit and not 5-over is just plain statistically insignificant.

yeah, for humans, sure, but it's strange that the autonomous car was programmed do emulate this.

Blending in with human driving straight up requires at least some minor rules fudging to not be disruptive. People drive marginally over the speed limit pretty frequently.

This doesn't seem like something caused by the autonomous driving. More of "the autonomous driving was unable to prevent this accident", while probably doing pretty good at preventing many other accidents. Unassisted drivers hit pedestrians in shadow on non-crosswalk areas all the time.

If the speed limit is actually 35 there, it was a relatively recent change. By following the Google Street View of that road, at the time they took street view images last (July 2017) then the last speed limit sign passed by the car (and therefore the "posted" limit at that point) was a 45mph sign just a few hundred yards before. Perhaps it was recently changed and the data was not yet updated?

duckshirt wrote:The accidents-per-mile ratios do NOT look good for the autonomous vehicles so far

Citation? Everything I've read says the opposite, even including this accident - and it seems like this particular accident would have occurred with a human driver too.

Maybe I'm just misreading their role, but...I mean, there *was* a human driver behind the wheel in this case, and they were unable to prevent the accident, yes? Not actively piloting the car, but there, among other things, to potentially take over in the case of an impending accident?

existential_elevator wrote:It's like a jigsaw puzzle of Hitler pissing on Mother Theresa. No individual piece is offensive, but together...

If you think hot women have it easy because everyone wants to have sex at them, you're both wrong and also the reason you're wrong.